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Urban Development and Greenhouses Gasses Will Fuel Urban Floods
When rain began falling in northern Georgia on September 15, 2009, little did Atlantans know that they would witness epic flooding throughout the city. Researchers are asking whether a combination of urban development and climate change fueled by greenhouse gasses could bring about comparable scenarios in other U.S. cities. Based on a new study, the answer is yes.
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How Do Floods Become a Disaster?
Since the 1990s, the number of fatalities from river floods has declined worldwide, but the amount of damage has risen sharply. Researchers attribute the decline in casualties to improved flood warning, technical protection measures and heightened hazard awareness.
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It’s Official: July Was Earth’s Hottest Month on Record
New global data show that July was the world’s hottest month ever recorded. The combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees F (0.93 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees C), making it the hottest July since records began 142 years ago.
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Fire Today Will Impact Water Tomorrow
The effects of wildfire don’t end when the flames go out. There can be environmental consequences for years to come—and keeping an eye on water is key.
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Small Towns Should Focus on Resilience
With heatwaves, bushfires, and floods, small towns and their surrounding communities have confronted a combination of successive disasters fueled by climate change. And it’s predicted to only get worse. “So, the challenge for all of us, but particularly areas at increasing risk of climate-fueled disasters, is to get ahead of what’s coming,” says one expert. “We need to ask: what we can do to reduce or even prevent some of these disasters from happening?”
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How Have Communities Been Faring During COVID-19? And How Will Lessons Learned Inform Future Response and Planning?
Now may be a good time to examine the choices communities made during the last year to see how these approaches shape continued COVID-19 response and recovery and help build resilience for future pandemic response.
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Earthquake Forecasts a Step Closer to Reality
Earthquakes — like lightning — strike unpredictably. For decades, scientists have struggled to reliably give forecasts for major earthquake hotspots, but now, an international team of scientists has embarked on a new initiative to do just that.
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Flood Risks in Germany Were Clearly Underestimated
Expert say that to better estimate flood risks, risk maps should also consider historical data. The floods which devastated Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia caused 15 confirmed deaths, with more than two dozen people still unaccounted for. The damage is estimated at more than EUR 10 billion.
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Middle-Class Residents Prefer to Stay Put after Floodwaters Recede
Flood disasters lead some people to move far from the places they had called home. A new study finds that middle-class people who made long-term plans to stay in their neighborhoods before they flooded are less likely to relocate even if they suffered significant damage.
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Global Warming Increased U.S. Crop Insurance Losses by $27 Billion in 27 Years
Higher temperatures attributed to climate change caused payouts from the nation’s biggest farm support program to increase by $27 billion between 1991 and 2017, according to new estimates from Stanford researchers. Costs are likely to rise even further with the growing intensity and frequency of heat waves and other severe weather events.
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Action Essential to Protect Water Security from Climate Impacts
A new report says that urgent action is needed to protect global water security from the impacts of climate and climate change.
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July: U.S. West Hit with Extreme Heat, Drought, Unrelenting Wildfires
July was an exceptional month of triple threats in the western United States: record heat, drought and raging wildfires. Other parts of the country saw extreme rainfall. The average temperature last month across the contiguous U.S. was 75.5 degrees F (1.9 degrees above average).
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Dire Outlook on Global Warming: IPCC
The IPCC warns that in twenty years, the world will likely reach — and even surpass — the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold that scientists have predicted will lead to irreversible changes such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and devastating floods and droughts around the world.
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For Forest Towns, 3 Wildfire Lessons as Dixie Fire Destroys Historic Greenville, California
How can people prepare for a future that’s unlike anything their communities have ever experienced? The emergence of extreme fires in recent years and the resulting devastation shows that communities need better means to anticipate mounting dangers, and underscores how settlement patterns, land management and lifestyles will have to change to prevent even larger catastrophes. Our research team of landscape architects, ecologists, social scientists and computer scientists has been exploring and testing strategies to help.
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Four Explanations for Why Europe Is Burning
Barely halfway through summer, the area burned by wildfires raging through the Balkans, Italy, and the southeastern Mediterranean has already eclipsed yearly averages.
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More headlines
The long view
Diminishing Snowmelt to Make Colorado, Utah, Wyoming Resemble the Arid Southwest
New research predicts that changes in mountain snowmelt will shift peak stream flows to much earlier in the year for the vast Colorado River Basin, altering reservoir management and irrigation across the entire region. As a result, upper basin in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming may more closely resemble the arid Southwest.
Challenges to Tidal Flats Pose Risks to 41M Americans Living in Coastal Counties
About 29 percent of the United States’ population live in coastline counties – more than 41 million are in Atlantic counties. This high population density poses a critical challenge to sustainable developments in coastal areas.
Boosting Efforts to Predict Harmful Solar Weather Events
When big blasts of energy from the sun envelop the Earth, they can very strong: a 2015 event so weakened Earth’s protective magnetic field that it penetrated to the atmosphere, posing a threat to everything from circling space station astronauts to delicate electronics and communication systems.
Mitigating Flood Disasters
Engineers have proposed a flood control measure which recommends designing permeable pavements to specifically suit local rainfall and soil conditions and reduce flood impacts.